Cool New Features in Office 2013

PublishedJanuary 18, 2013

The Sky Drive Sync is available for all the programs in the new Office 2013 suite.

Office 2013 has debuted for businesses, although it won’t be available to the general public until the end of January (*current scheduled release date). While it may look similar to recent versions, Office 2013 has made some changes and added in some cool new features that are sure to be helpful.

Last Location Feature

Have you ever closed a document, only to open it a day later to spend several minutes figuring out where you last left off? With Word and PowerPoint 2013, this is now a thing of the past, as the software automatically remembers where you left off.

When you open a document you’ve been working on, a little box will appear on the right that says “Welcome Back, pick up where you left off.” Just click the box, and the document jumps to where you were last.

PDF Editing

Word just got a whole lot more robust, thanks to the increased PDF editing capability features. In the past, if you wanted to edit a PDF in Word, you would have to convert it first, and then edit it. But the new Word can now do this extra work for you. To edit PDF documents, all you have to do is

open them in Word, make your changes, and save your work. It’s that easy. No PDF editing software required.

Sky Drive Integration

It used to be that OneNote was the only Office produce to have access to the Cloud, but that’s not the case anymore. With Office 2013, any program can now sync to Sky Drive (Microsoft’s free large file storage service) allowing you to save your documents in the Cloud, and access them from anywhere.

Sky Drive integration is also what makes this next feature possible.

Syncing Across Devices

Now you can access your documents from anywhere, regardless of which device you’re using. Create a Word Document on your laptop, but need to edit

using your tablet? No problem, as long as your document is synced to your Sky Drive account, you can access it from wherever you are, and whatever device you’re using. All you need is internet access.

This is just a taste of some of the great features available in Office 2013. Additionally, each software component within the suite seems to have some great changes that are sure to boost productivity (once you learn how to use those new features to your advantage).

Julie Strier is a freelance writer who likes to help you figure out the latest advances in software, and whether or not it is worth it to upgrade. (In the case of Office 2013, it is.) Email:julie@mybusinesswriter.com. Website: www.mybusinesswriter.com.